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MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

hacker-tools.github.io

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Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#71

Post by chriswarbo »

komali2 wrote: post #44
melling wrote: post #9

MIT went with the Berkeley editor. A lost opportunity to introduce programmers to the beauty of using Emacs and Lisp.

But almost all IDEs and editors have a VIM mode - learning VIM is a good way to teach people how to keep their fingers on home row, and the skill is (because of what I stated previously) easily transferred to whatever editor you like. From my perspective, I tried to learn Emacs, and decided it's a great editor, once you spend weeks to months to get it actually "working good," and learn shitloads of commands (let alon…

I wouldn't say Emacs is "a nightmare to set up"; rather, it's a continuous process of learning and improving.

Getting Emacs installed and running should hopefully be easy (e.g. via your OS package manager). After that I think it mostly comes down to coming up with workflows that you're comfortable with, building muscle memory and gradually introducing new things to see whether or not they stick.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#72

Post by Symmetry »

melling wrote: post #9

MIT went with the Berkeley editor. A lost opportunity to introduce programmers to the beauty of using Emacs and Lisp.

As an MIT alum I was sort of surprised they went with vim over Emacs too. MIT is almost the Vatican of lisp, after all. I sort of felt like an apostate for switching over to vim there.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#73

Post by fouc »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #67
TeMPOraL wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Superpowers-readily-available... That's the one? EDIT: I guess it is, via https://digitalsuperpowers.com/ . The list of topics is great, gonna check the book out!

That's it! Let me know how you like it. It's my first foray into writing books. Walking the line between utility and breadth is tough.

Hopefully you change the recommended tools based on the OS. (i.e. OSX would be slightly different from linux for certain commands). And focus on doing as much as possible from the command line?

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#74

Post by acidburnNSA »

fouc wrote: post #73
acidburnNSA wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's it! Let me know how you like it. It's my first foray into writing books. Walking the line between utility and breadth is tough.

Hopefully you change the recommended tools based on the OS. (i.e. OSX would be slightly different from linux for certain commands). And focus on doing as much as possible from the command line?

I tried to highlight examples that are available on Mac, Linux, and Windows through the package managers, (homebrew, apt, chocolatey) and at least provided system-specific installation lines for each based on those. It is highly command-line and pure-text centric.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#75

Post by joseph8th »

melling wrote: post #9

MIT went with the Berkeley editor. A lost opportunity to introduce programmers to the beauty of using Emacs and Lisp.

When I took C at University of New Mexico, and later Data Structures and Algoithms from the same professor, Emacs was required. Period. He even provided a download of his .emacs file (still tucked into my init.el). He also stressed make, gdb and valgrind ("It's not fully clean until it's valgrind clean.")

No emphasis on git, but I used it anyway.

A decade later, and my Emacs easily surpasses most VS Code features.

A decade later. Heh. Co-workers use VS Code OOTB and I'm like, "Yeah, but can you tangle or play Tetris?!"

Truth is, whatever works for you and gets out of your way is the right tool. I'm invested and happy with Emacs, but also I get why it's not the first choice for a lot of devs.

Even though it should be. :)

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#76

Post by joseph8th »

snazz wrote: post #34
melling wrote: post #9

MIT went with the Berkeley editor. A lost opportunity to introduce programmers to the beauty of using Emacs and Lisp.

I’m sure a not-insignificant portion will move on to Evil mode. Vim -> Emacs is a better direction than Emacs -> Vim, because you’ll learn the more efficient editing style, then have access to the better environment, instead of getting used to the great Emacs environment minus the Vim keybindings, and feeling constrained by losing this when moving on to Vim.

I think this is true. I learned the Emacs keybindings and now they're muscle memory. I can't transfer that to Vim, but I could have transferred the other way and be proficient in two great editors.

Nobody wants to die on Emacs Keybindings Hill, even diehards like me and my pinky.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#77

Post by MrEldritch »

flukus wrote: post #55
jointhefuture wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exact opposite of my experience. IDEs let me easily add conditional break points, toggle between source, disassembly, source+disassembly, set variables just by clicking on them, view multiple areas of memory in different tabs/windows. Set how that memory is viewed (bytes, words, dwords, floats, as a type of class/struct, array of classes/structs), show different contexts at once, have multiple windows per thread/proc…

> sounds like you've never used one but then that's what I'd guess from watching most vim users You'd be mistaken, I've spent a huge chunk of my adult life inside Visual Studio. IME most devs don't even know you can add a condition to a breakpoint (hiding feature behind right clicks aren't obvious) and anything complicated turns into a very convoluted process very quickly. Even setting conditional breakpoints are bas…

>IME most devs don't even know you can add a condition to a breakpoint (hiding feature behind right clicks aren't obvious)

Can confirm: I sure didn't. ...honestly most of my debugging is with print statements.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#78

Post by ehavener »

rollinDyno wrote: post #59

I strongly believe man is a product of his tools, my slow but steady increase of their mastery is a source of pride. I've spent nights just mindelessly browsing the web in the search for a tool I didn't know about (it can be a service, a browser extension, a text editor plugin) so just looking at the title of this post made me ready for an injection of dopamine. I have a branch on my todo list solely focused on my to…

I'm interested if you have a list of your favorite tooling resources?

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#79

Post by roryokane »

jointhefuture wrote: post #47

The article on editors is basically "here's the names of 5 editors, now learn vim" I know this will piss off vim users but in my experience vim users are seriously out date when it comes to dev tools. It's like they never left the 70s. vim might be great, it might be available everywhere but when I see a vim user I then see them use something like gdb and have clearly never experienced a modern debugger because if th…

You’re assuming that Vim users use only Vim. I use Vim all the time for editing config files, small Ruby scripts, and JavaScript projects without types – for these cases it is among the best tools for the job. And when I work on, for example, big Java projects, I use IntelliJ IDEA plus a Vim keybindings plugin, so I can use the IDE’s debugger and its refactoring support. Don’t make sweeping generalizations about Vim users not knowing when other tools are appropriate.

Re: MIT Hacker Tools: a lecture series on programmer tools

#80

Post by fstarship »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #67
TeMPOraL wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Superpowers-readily-available... That's the one? EDIT: I guess it is, via https://digitalsuperpowers.com/ . The list of topics is great, gonna check the book out!

That's it! Let me know how you like it. It's my first foray into writing books. Walking the line between utility and breadth is tough.

As a computer Science graduate with no experience doing images that section alone was worth getting the book for me. I plan on using at as encyclopaedia for future uses.

I am happy you had compatibility in mind as I am not super fussed on which operating system I use.

I would suggest adding a virtual desktop section as that has been the biggest gamechanger for me ( I use windows 10s with virtual desktop enhancer) I dont know any linux or mac equilivants though.

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